ABSTRACT

At the outset, let’s get one thing straight: Environmental regulation is not, nor was it ever conceived to be, an instrument of place making, whether for cities, suburbs, or rural communities. Wilderness and parks perhaps, but not human settlements. Despite the primacy of ecology to place, of natural systems to the livability and overall quality of life of cities and towns, the U.S. environmental protection system has traditionally not been in the business of place making. By place making I mean the art of planning, designing, and building physical

places for people (as opposed to plants and wildlife) that simultaneously reinforces a community’s unique identity, history, and character, as well as its ecological integrity, places whose walkability, human scale, and usable public spaces, among other assets, help inspire both deeply personal and robustly civic thoughts and feelings. These are places, in Tim Beatley’s words, “of enduring value that people are not ashamed to leave to their descendants,”3 where the much-touted ideas (or, more precisely, buzzwords) of “livability,” “quality of life,” and even “sustainability” feel most at home. Place making asks the central question: What makes for the ideal human habitat, both built and unbuilt?